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Take a step back. Look around.
There seems to be a new enemy in our midst. Our entire
American culture is up in arms about what to do with this
new threat. This troubling element seems to have invaded our
lives; everywhere we turn we are reminded of its presence.
Stories about the threats of this enemy are all over our
newspapers and televisions. It seems as if we are just
beginning to realize that although this menace has been
among us for years, if it is left unchecked, it can (and
will) do untold damage to us. The presence of this new
danger among us has caused many Americans to change the way
they live and the way they travel. Many of us are more on
guard than ever against this adversary. There are many new
programs in place to combat this menace to our way of life.
Efforts are being taken across the board to minimize, if not
completely eliminate, this new enemy. Some would even argue
that only a preemptive attack, getting it before
it gets us, is the only way safe way to deal with it.
So what is this enemy that has
many Americans so nervous and anxious? Is it Al Qaeda? No!
Is it Osama bin Laden? No! Is it a chemical or biological
weapons attack? No! Is it the global AIDS epidemic? No! If
you took a quick step back to look at our culture—a scan of
the magazine racks, a glance at our nightly news, a couple
of minutes watching daytime talk shows or watching Headline
News, or just watching and listening to the actions and
conversation of the culture around us—you would begin to
think that the greatest threat to our lives and our
livelihoods is the almighty, ever-powerful carbohydrate. The
carb: the organic compound found in sugar, cereal, fruits
and vegetables that provides fuel for the body (and inches
to the waistline). The carb: public enemy #1. And what is
the most targeted manifestation at the top of this enemy’s
list? Bread. The dreaded loaf of bread.
Perhaps I am exaggerating a bit.
But maybe not too much. Think about it for a minute. You can
hardly go to a grocery store without finding the aisles
stocked with low-carb or no-carb products. Walk into a
bookstore and you find the shelves full of advice on how to
combat the carb. The approaches range from A to Z—from
Atkins to The Zone. In this carbohydrate craze, they have
even come out with a low-carb Oreo. A low-carb Oreo! You
have got to be kidding me! That is how crazed we have
become. Come on. Even I know that a person trying to improve
his health and lose body fat has no business eating any
cookies, whether they are low-carb or not, and certainly
these
processed cookies from Kraft are not a healthy
choice. What we’ll do to have our “cake” and be able to eat
it, too!
The attack on bread is evident,
as well. Subway now has a full selection of pita sandwiches.
Recent trips to Max and Erma’s and Fuddruckers have given me
the option to get a “bun-less” burger. Bread sales have
dropped some 15% in the last couple of years, making
franchises like Breadsmith and Panera Bread struggle to stay
afloat in this anti-bread environment. Taco Bell has even
seized on this newfound fear of bread with its ad campaign
that asks us to “think outside the bun.” We seem to be a
nation with a serious bread problem.
Bread,
which for 2000 years has been a central symbol of our
church’s communal worship, is now seen as the cursed cause
of our corpulent condition. What happens when the body of
Christ becomes symbolic of bodily ruin? An author writing on
“Religion and Weight Loss” reported that: “A Catholic
friend....chose, for the first time in his life, to believe
in transubstantiation, the literal transforming of the bread
and wine into body and blood, because that, after all, would
be low carb.”
But maybe these fears are not
without some foundation. Consider these statistics for a
minute. In the United States, 127 million adults are
overweight. Sixty million are considered obese. And nine
million are diagnosed as severely obese. Couple those
statistics with this one: Tonight, 31 million Americans will
go to bed not knowing where their next meal is coming from.
It seems like some are consuming too much bread while others
are not getting enough. We are a people with a bread
problem.
But this bread problem is not
only about the way we eat bread. It is also a problem of how
we spend bread. We know that in our culture, bread is not
just something we eat. Bread is also something we earn.
Bread is not only wheat or rye or pumpernickel. Bread is
also salary, stipend and Social Security. While some are
bread bakers, others are breadwinners. And when it comes to
the bread that is measured by dollars and cents rather than
by calories and carbs, we find that we still have a bit of a
bread problem. Consider this: There were two billion credit
card solicitations mailed out last year. Last year, the
average American carried $25,000 of credit card debt, or
about $4,000 for every man, woman and child living in North
America. It seems like we are consuming tomorrow’s bread
today in order to experience MasterCard’s so-called
“priceless” moments.
This bread problem isn’t just
physical and it isn’t just economic. This bread problem is
also spiritual. Bread is one of the central symbols of our
faith. Bread has a rich history in Bible literature. There
are 330 references to “bread” in the New Revised Standard
Version of the Bible. In our tradition, bread has become
symbolic of the very presence of God. But let’s face it,
fewer and fewer seem interested in our bread. The
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has dropped from 4.1 million
members in 1960 to 2.5 million. Over the same period,
membership in the Episcopal Church decreased from 3.4
million to 2.5 million and United Methodists have seen their
numbers drop from 11 million to 8.3 million. Because of the
rapid growth in the nation’s population over the last forty
years, the proportional shrinkage of these groups is even
greater than the raw numbers suggest.
Why are fewer and fewer people
interested in our bread? There are a lot of reasons. The
issue is complex and complicated. But we would be remiss if
we didn’t say that one of the reasons people no longer come
to us for spiritual nourishment is because there have been
those unfortunate times when the bread was misused. Many
have been turned away from the church because of the way we
sometimes hoard our bread, claiming sole possession of it
and drawing rigid lines on who is worthy to receive the
blessings from it. Others have left the church because we
have at times been more concerned about making sure that the
bread we serve is the “right” kind of bread, made with the
“right” ingredients, baked in the “right” pans and served in
the “right” fashion rather than giving away bread that truly
satisfies a culture that is hungry for meaning and
connection. It seems like we do indeed have a bread
problem—a physical, economic and spiritual bread problem.
So what are we to do? Do you
remember a few years back when the book Chicken Soup for
the Soul came out? It promised to warm our hearts and
soothe our souls just like a good helping of mama’s chicken
soup. Well, I think it is time for someone to come out with
a book to help us with our bread problem. It is time
somebody wrote The South Beach Diet for the Soul.
From what I understand, The
South Beach Diet, created by a cardiologist named Dr.
Arthur Agaston, is not really a no-carb or low-carb diet; it
is a “right carb” diet. It helps its followers learn how eat
the right kinds and right amounts of bread. That is what we
need for our culture today. We need The South
Beach Diet for the Soul, a guide to help us relearn how
make, consume, enjoy and share the bread we eat, spend and
receive from God. And when it comes to that guideline, I
think we can begin right here in the Lord’s Prayer with the
very familiar line, “Give us this day our daily bread…”
Let’s begin with the first word:
Give. “Give us this day our daily bread…” The
South Beach Diet for the Soul begins by recognizing that
we lack something we need. We don’t have to be given
something we can get for ourselves. This is hard for us. We
have become convinced that if we need something, we can just
go out and get it. We are convinced that most anything we
need, we can buy. We are also convinced that the things we
buy will satisfy our needs.
I guess that is why I am willing
to pay $60 to $100 more for a pair of shoes that has the
Nike “swoosh” on it. I will pay the extra, not just because
it is a better shoe, but because I am hoping to get what I
think the shoe promises to give me: a sense of identity, a
sense of worth, a sense of belonging and protection from not
being accepted by others.
I’ll never forget a boy I worked
with while I was with Big Brother/Big Sister in Detroit.
This was by far the poorest family I had ever worked with.
They had nothing. I had secured a mentor for David, one of
the boys in the family. This mentor made an arrangement for
David to help him with some work around the house in order
to make some money. David and his mentor worked together all
summer, mowing the lawn, cleaning the garage and trimming
the hedges. The mentor would put away all the money David
was earning, so that at the end of the summer he would have
a large, lump sum of money to make a significant purchase.
The end of the summer came.
David had made $120. That was more money than he had ever
seen at one time. He could have bought himself a couple of
outfits to wear. He could have bought himself some books to
read or some games to play. He could have bought a nice bike
with that money. But what did he buy? He spent the entire
wad of cash, representing all of the hours he had worked, on
one thing: the latest pair of Air Jordan Nike tennis
shoes—shoes he was sure to outgrow or wear out within the
year. I am sure he bought them, in part, because he thought
those shoes would give him an identity. He thought they
would make him “cool” in the eyes of his peers, and give him
a connection. Young David thought those shoes would give him
all of the things God had already given him.
If we take the counsel of the
Lord’s Prayer to heart (“Give us this day our daily
bread…”), we realize that we can only be given the things we
need the most. We cannot buy them. They are not for sale.
Jesus
counseled us to live this way. He said:
“Ask and it will be given
to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be
opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks
finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
“Which of you, if his
son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for
a fish, will you give him a snake? If you, then, though you
are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how
much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to
those who ask him!”
The South Beach Diet for the
Soul begins by inviting us to go through life with our
hands open, ready to receive the very goodness of God.
The words “us” and “our” also
tell us something very important about the true meaning of
this prayer Jesus taught us to pray. “Give us this
day our daily bread…” We don’t pray: “Give me
this day my daily bread…” In a world where the bread
isn’t always evenly distributed—where some consume too much
and others go without—The South Beach Diet for the Soul
reminds us that the bread we pray for is not for us alone.
We pray as a part of and on behalf of a community of others,
and the way we pray and work for our bread cannot be
divorced from our prayer and work on behalf of others.
Proverbs reminds us that: “Those who are generous are
blessed, for they share their bread with the poor.” We can
never pray the Lord’s Prayer as an individual; we can only
pray it in solidarity with all the children of “Our
Father, who art in heaven…”
This part of the prayer tells us
something very important about how to use this bread of
ours. When we pray, “Give us this day our daily
bread…”, it is important to note that we are not asking for
weekly bread or monthly bread, but daily bread. We are
asking for sufficient bread, not stockpiled bread. This part
of our South Beach Diet for the Soul has its roots in
the Hebrew Scriptures and the great story of the Exodus. In
the 16th chapter, Moses has led the people out of
Egypt, through the Red Sea, and now they find themselves
wandering the desert together. And that’s why the question
is asked: “Hey, who brought the Fruit Loops?”
There they are, out in the
desert. They have overcome impossible odds, only to be
confronted with the most basic of needs: hunger. This is the
true test. Is this God who led them out of slavery going to
leave them to starve in the desert?
The story tells us that God
provided. He rained down bread, manna from heaven. It’s not
the best-tasting stuff, mind you, but it is enough to get
by. Then God tells them, and tells us, something important
about bread. “I’m going to give you just enough bread for
each day. Gather only what you need. Don’t hoard it away.
Make sure everybody gets some. There will be enough to go
around. I’m going to give you daily bread and you’re just
going to have to trust me that what I give you is enough and
that there will be more tomorrow.” And sure enough, some did
not trust. They took more than they needed to establish a
little “rainy day” fund, just in case God didn’t come
through tomorrow. The story tells us what happened to the
hoarded bread. It is what happens to all hoarded bread, be
it physical, economic or spiritual. It became rotten and
full of worms, no longer good for anything or anyone.
To pray “Give us this day our
daily bread…” is asking that we might learn the meaning
of enough. It is praying that we learn to take only the
bread we need and to make sure that others get a portion of
the bread. This part of the prayer is as much a confession
as it is a petition. It asks us to be honest about the
amount of bread we consume, leaving crumbs for so many
others. The South Beach Diet for the Soul asks that
we learn to live simply so that others may simply live.
And finally, the prayer brings
us to the very heart of the matter: the bread. The very
thing we are asking God to give us. “Give us this day our
daily bread…” It is not our daily pizza, or daily
steak and eggs, or our daily latte. (Now the preacher is
meddling.) It is bread. And what is bread? Bread is basic.
It is a staple, the metaphor for basic nutrition. This part
of the prayer reminds us of what
Mahatma Ghandi said: “There are people in the world so
hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of
bread.” Give us the basics, God. Give us what we really need
to get through today.
And in
this prayer, we discover that all we really need is the One
who said: “I am the bread of life. Those who come to
me will never go hungry.” That is the bread we pray for. The
bread we yearn for is that day-to-day connection with the
God made known to us in Jesus Christ. The bread that can
carry us through the valley of the shadow of death, the
bread that brings us to the still waters, the bread that
truly restores our souls. We pray for the bread that is our
God—the bread that satisfies our deepest needs and
hunger.
I’ll never forget when Bridget
and I first moved to Detroit. We attended a church in the
heart of downtown, a church that twice a week would open its
doors to feed those who were hungry. On those days, people
would form a line that would go throughout the entire
fellowship hall, down the stairs, through the lobby and out
into the parking lot. People lined up so that they might
receive food for that day. Then came the first Sunday that
we sat in the sanctuary of that church while they served
communion. On that Sunday, the pastor stood in front of us
and said, “The line we stand in today to receive communion
is no different than the line the folks stand in two times a
week to receive a meal. The communion line is a bread line
and the bread line is a communion line. For when it comes to
the goodness of God, all we can do is stand in line with our
hands open, ready to receive the grace God so freely
gives.”
On a night when we talk about
daily bread, it is only appropriate that we come to the
table, that we stand in line, that we open our hands and we
receive the bread that is our Lord. Let’s come to the table,
praying: “Give us this day our daily bread.”
Notes: The quote on religion
and weight loss came from an online article by Kathleen
Lunson entitled “Tough Talk and No Nonsense.” As a person
who continues to struggle with the inches around his waist,
I found her article very interesting. She quotes from
Leviticus 3:16: “All fat belongs to the Lord,” and then goes
on to say:
That was the first verse quoted
to me as having anything to do with dieting. I never quite
knew how to apply it to my own situation. It referred to
what to do with the meat that was taken from animal
sacrifices, what could be eaten by the priests, what could
be sold and what could not. But what did it have to do, if
anything, with the fat on my thighs… Obesity, in and of
itself, is surely not a sin. It can be a product of a
lifetime of food intolerances. It can be a product of
metabolic and hormonal imbalances. And it can be a product
of gluttony and sloth, both of which surely are sins.
The statistics on obesity came
from the American Obesity Association’s website. The
statistics on hunger came from the Food Research and Action
Council’s website. The statistics on the drop in membership
in mainline denominations came from the Winter of 2005
report done by The Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study
of Religion in Public Life based at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut.
Once again I am thankful to the
work of Michael Crosby and his book, The Prayer That
Jesus Taught Us.
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